Nigeria set for state police in January as NEC endorses proposal

It was discovered at Thursday’s National Economic Council, NEC, meeting chaired by the Vice President, Kashim Shettima that 36 states submitted their recommendations.

Uba Sani, the Kaduna State Governor, announced the endorsement while briefing state house correspondents at the end of the NEC meeting, adding that definite position would be adopted at the next meeting in January, 2025.

“Today, one of the discussions we had at the NEC meeting was the update on the creation of state police. As you are aware, there was a submission by the states toward the establishment of state police,” Governor Sani said. ⁣
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“Today, about 35 states have already made their submission for establishing state police in Nigeria. And I can say here that from what is available, virtually most of the states are in agreement with the establishment of state police in Nigeria.

“But today, the council decided to step down the discussion until the next council meeting, because we need to come up with a report from the secretariat. After the report, there will be deliberation at the next NEC meeting which is likely taking place in January.”

Sani added that there would be further stakeholders engagement een after the NEC deliberations

 “Not only that, there’s also a resolution in the last NEC meeting, which today the Secretariat have also agreed on that there will be further stakeholder engagement after the panel and deliberation by the members of the NEC,” he said. ⁣
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“So all we are saying here is that 35 states have made their submission, and many states are in agreement for the establishment of state police, considering the fact that virtually every state has their peculiarity in terms of the problem we are having of insecurity in our own states.

“Knowing fully well that we have a lot of ungoverned spaces in Nigeria, and also that we have a lot of deficit in terms of number of boots on ground, looking at the fact that a lot of security agencies, the police, the army and other relevant security agencies have no personnel to cover all the government space, that is the reason most of us agreed that establishment of state police in Nigeria is the way forward toward addressing the problem insecurity in our own country.”